A Website and Blog to Help you Find what you are Looking For

More Questions & Answers

A Moment of Enlightenment

Thank you for your guidance. I tried to do the meditation that you mentioned, but I haven’t been having much success. I think I only once got the feeling of “being the watcher”, in the beginning of a meditation, but it only lasted for a couple of seconds. It was a strange feeling tho, like I tried to step back and just be the watcher, and then like… I completely disappeared. I was just not there, I couldn’t find myself anywhere, but something was left there, that wasn’t me. It’s like they say – awareness was there, and I was not. Everything was gone, but there was something left, and that was awareness. Of course, I am not sure about this experience, may be I was just hallucinating it, but it felt like something real, at least the only thing that “happened” during meditation. I tried to meditate some more, but it feels like nothing happens and I’m just struggling through it.

That sounds like a wonderful experience. You began to experience your Self.

It is normal to try to hold on to your identity or personality even when you begin to feel the Self. But feeling as if you are nothing is part of the process. The next step in this is to completely surrender to the experience of nothingness as if you were melting or dissolving into it. It may feel as if you will die if you go too far with this but you will not. No matter what that voice in your head tells you. Just keep going until there is nothing left of ‘you’.

Everything changes once you do this.

Do not struggle with it. Struggling is like shadow boxing or playing air drums and expecting to get a sound from the snare.

The emptiness, nothingness is what is Real. The personality you call your name is just a hologram.

Just relax and watch and then surrender.

Take care

Jon

A Question about Awakening

I often hear references to waking up or remembering when referring to enlightenment. What memory are they referring to? And do you need a teacher to remember?

Your questions are very good and ones that most people ask.
You are correct, it is about language and the attempt to put something that is unexplainable into words that people will be able to relate to, understand, recognize and feel. I certainly have not found those magical words. I do not know anyone who has.

It is like trying to learn a new language. At the beginning it all seems a bit overwhelming but when you have learned that language and can speak in fluently everything becomes clear and you look back and realize how simple it all was.

See, even that example was not very good. 🙂

I guess it is more like having a long bad dream and then waking up to realize it was a just a dream and now you are safe and happy and you really always had been.

The memory referred to is the innate memory of who and what you really are. This is what we awaken to.

From my own experience; I finally and fully realized what I was and had always been. I laughed out loud. “I have always been this One. I have never been anyone or anything else. I have never suffered, never been in pain, never been depressed.” And then I laughed a lot more after that. I felt inspired to write about all of this but words have always been inadequate. I have done hundreds of workshops, lectures and seminars about this and I find that some people get it and some people do not. I have written a book about this but those words too only touch the surface. But I always keep in mind that everyone I speak with about all of this is already the same as I am.

So does one need a teacher to help? Probably yes. Like a guide on a trip through a forest. Hopefully you find a guide who knows the paths and has truly been beyond the forest. Not just one who has read about what is beyond the forest. 🙂

I hope this is helpful. I know that the words are inadequate. Often it is easier in person.

A question about Souls

Is there really a Soul or Self?

As far as a discussion of whether there is a soul or not, it is a very interesting metaphysical discussion or debate but at the end of the day there will be only one proof of the matter. We will each find out for ourselves at that moment. (Or not). 🙂

I think it is better to focus on having your own personal experience of Self rather than depending on the writings of others. Others can serve as guideposts or teachers but nothing can replace personal experience of the Self to confirm its existence and to confirm your real identity.

I very much enjoy science and, especially, Quantum Physics, but none of that can replace personal experience.

Can personal experience be flawed? Of course. Can scientific method be flawed, absolutely. Especially when we explore Quantum reality where the observer effects the observed.

These things can be debated ad infinitum.

And then we can sit back. Be still and feel the Self and relax and enjoy life.